Hello from Spain

[tofro]

I have read that minerva does a special check on microdrives while formatting and if there aren't a bunch of damaged sectors it rejects the md, right now the firmware creates "perfect" microdrives so I need to verify that this is true and "kill" some sectors when a format is detected (it should work with pre-existing images).!

marking one as defect is enough to make Minerva happy.

[drgusman]

I have read that minerva does a special check on microdrives while formatting and if there aren't a bunch of damaged sectors it rejects the md, right now the firmware creates "perfect" microdrives so I need to verify that this is true and "kill" some sectors when a format is detected (it should work with pre-existing images).!

marking one as defect is enough to make Minerva happy.

Only one? Then it will be a lot easier, is only a matter of setting sector 254 always to zeros

I got Minerva installed so I will be able to test it very soon

[drgusman]

I have read that minerva does a special check on microdrives while formatting and if there aren't a bunch of damaged sectors it rejects the md, right now the firmware creates "perfect" microdrives so I need to verify that this is true and "kill" some sectors when a format is detected (it should work with pre-existing images).!

marking one as defect is enough to make Minerva happy.

It was a bit more than one, sector 254 must be completelly out of the scope, Minerva checks that sector 0 is read in less than 255 sectors, and then one sector must be damaged. It's working!

[qbits]

Hi drgusman,

Welcome to the fold, your QL Microdrive to memory card replacement has generated a bit of a buzz. As do others a full documentation of your work will make interesting reading.

If you’re looking for another area to work on may I suggest removal of the TV coax and DIM Monitor socket to replace with an HDMI upgrade and connector for Flatscreen Monitor. More work than you may think ???

A simpler and quicky add on would be a mouse but maybe with a USB port.

Then as others you would be heading towards a replacement QL mother board. Perhaps those in the Know will post the various Hardware op-tions such as Gold Card to the Q68 and some comparisons on speed over original BBQL.

All the Best
QBITS

[dilwyn]

...
A simpler and quicky add on would be a mouse but maybe with a USB port.

Then as others you would be heading towards a replacement QL mother board. Perhaps those in the Know will post the various Hardware op-tions such as Gold Card to the Q68 and some comparisons on speed over original BBQL.

All the Best
QBITS

Having USB on QL was always something I would have liked to see. There is of course the big issue of drivers (happy to confess I know little of the amount of effort involved even just for this).

But even if only keyboard and mouse drivers were ever developed for QL-USB I'd be very happy with that.

[drgusman]

Hi drgusman,

Welcome to the fold, your QL Microdrive to memory card replacement has generated a bit of a buzz. As do others a full documentation of your work will make interesting reading.

If you’re looking for another area to work on may I suggest removal of the TV coax and DIM Monitor socket to replace with an HDMI upgrade and connector for Flatscreen Monitor. More work than you may think ???

A simpler and quicky add on would be a mouse but maybe with a USB port.

Then as others you would be heading towards a replacement QL mother board. Perhaps those in the Know will post the various Hardware op-tions such as Gold Card to the Q68 and some comparisons on speed over original BBQL.

All the Best
QBITS

Hi!

I'm on the process of finishing the thing to document all, I'm adjusting a bit the PCB's, I wanted to upload it today but I had some work so I expect to upload everything this weekend. The sources are already published in Github https://github.com/gusmanb/micropicodrive if anyone is curious, the firmware is fully commented, the KiKad project contains the schematics and the PCBs and the software folder contains the microdrive manager to manipulate MDV images

About the screen, well, yesterday I assembled the video_if_ql_vga and is already working




I think that I'm going towards adding mass storage, I need to start investigating how disk drives work in the QL and which options are available, with the microdrives the ammount of programs that I have been able to try is relatively small, the major part of zips that I download assume a disk drive, I solved that with my MDV manager but then most of them don't fit in the space of a md

...
A simpler and quicky add on would be a mouse but maybe with a USB port.

Then as others you would be heading towards a replacement QL mother board. Perhaps those in the Know will post the various Hardware op-tions such as Gold Card to the Q68 and some comparisons on speed over original BBQL.

All the Best
QBITS

Having USB on QL was always something I would have liked to see. There is of course the big issue of drivers (happy to confess I know little of the amount of effort involved even just for this).

But even if only keyboard and mouse drivers were ever developed for QL-USB I'd be very happy with that.

Adding an USB keyboard should not be too difficult if it's connected to the internal keyboard connectors, a small pass-through with a pico or stm32, a bunch of level shifters and a USB connector should suffice to get it working without any need of drivers as the machine would see it as its own native keyboard. A mouse is something totally different, I have literally zero knowledge of the software architecture of the QL and very little of the hardware, I know the basics just by reading the schematics and some tech docs that I got from your web site (amazing place btw!).

To develop the MD I played with advantage as I come from the speccy and I have an IF1 and some microdrives, so I knew where I was heading to, I only had to check the differences of the format and with a logic analyzer it was not too difficult

In any case I want to learn about the os architecture as it looks very interesting, so who knows, maybe some day I get something able to work, but before I need a machine in conditions and there is where a mass storage comes into play (after the memory expansion, of course), I still haven't even been able to see the pointer environment!

Cheers!

[drgusman]

Ok, all is in place

I have created the [wiki](https://github.com/gusmanb/micropicodrive/wiki) at Github with instructions on how to assemble and use the device. Also I have added the BOM to the Hardware folder with links to the components, I have updated the mdv tools with the latest version and have created a release with the binaries ready to use and the firmware compiled.

Cheers!

[Chris_68]

Hi Gusman

absolutely great, looks really nice!!